She asked my father’s name, and I told her, and of course she didn’t know him. My father had never lived in Groveland, and most likely his business would never have brought him here. Yet I had a feeling that my mother had found me here. What were the circumstances? How had that come about? What fears haunted her?
“Well, there’s a scad of books about the area, and the oil patch, and the pulpwood mills upstairs in the parlor library,” Aunt Char offered. I had the sense of watching two sevens roll up on the slot machine and waiting for the third. “I haven’t read most of ’em. Don’t need to. Mercy, I’ve heard the stories all my life, sugar. I just buy the books here and there, when there’s a book signin’ at the library, or somebody speaks at the ladies’ club or the church, and I put ’em upstairs for the customers.”
“There’s one in particular I’m looking for,” I told her, my hopes inching up and up and up. “A book about the early-day timber industry. There was a mention of some of my relatives in it, I think.
An East Texas Timber Town History.
The author’s name is White, I believe. M. L. White.”
Aunt Char’s eyes widened, and she slapped a hand to her chest. I suspected I’d said the wrong thing until she threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, scat! You won’t find a copy of that rag upstairs. Mrs. Mercy White wrote that book. Her daddy was the sheriff in Groveland for some years. Don’t let the name fool you, either. She was a nasty, spiteful woman. Told all sorts of tales in her book, only about half of them true, but she got her revenge on folks, I guess, before she died. That book was like the
National Enquirer
of the whole county, hon. I think by now the ladies’ auxiliary has gathered up every copy and burned them. Mercy White embarrassed most of those women, too.”
“I see.” Suddenly I was back to square one, my roll of the dice having come up empty. It seemed that Epiphany and I had gone on the lam and traveled all the way to east Texas in search of the rarest book in the county.
I heard the clatter of feet on the stairs, and Aunt Char and I left the front room to meet Epiphany and Sharla in the entry hall. Chris lumbered along behind them and quickly excused himself, having the look of a man whose wife had just given him a dressing-down.
Epiphany’s eyes were as wide as Easter eggs. “You’re not gonna believe this place!” she breathed, seemingly somewhere between awe and trepidation. “It’s like . . . Oh, man, and there’s all kinds of . . . You just don’t even know . . . and
Ghost Finders
was here, and they filmed a show. Lyndon B. Johnson slept up there, too, and there was this little girl that fell out the window, and a baby that died of pneumonia. Her picture’s in my
room
.” Her gaze rolled upward, her lip curling with it, as if she were considering the proposition of sharing space with a ghost.
Sharla touched her apologetically. “I knew I shouldn’t have let Chris take her up there. Sorry. He loves to tell those silly old stories. But, honestly, I grew up in this house, and I never saw any ghosts here.” She emphasized
never
and
any
in a way that had the air of protesting too much, and perhaps seeing my concern, she added, “
Ghost Finders
didn’t find anything, truly. And they had equipment all over the house. Chris just likes to tease. He shouldn’t have been scaring your granddaughter.”
In the periphery of my vision, Aunt Char, who had been watching Epiphany with no small curiosity, blinked in obvious surprise. Epiphany saw it, too, I could tell, and she flashed a knowing look my way, proving the point she’d made earlier in the car, I supposed. People considered us an unlikely-looking pair.
“Oh, not to worry.” I addressed the reply to both Sharla and Aunt Char, but also to Epiphany. “My granddaughter is a smart girl. She’s very practical, good with science and math and the like, not the type to get caught up in tall tales and ghost stories. Right, Epiphany?”
Epiphany nodded, then shrugged, then shook her head, a mixed bag of answers. Threading her arms over her stomach, she swiveled a glance up the stairs. I had a feeling she was wishing we’d stayed at the Pine View Motel with the truckers. “Yeah, I guess not.” Despite her halfhearted display of bravery, she followed close on my heels as we toured the house.
After the tour and a late-night snack in the kitchen, Epiphany and I went upstairs to settle in for the evening and search through the vast library of local-subject-matter books there. We were soon frustrated with the volume of information, though, and descended into a disagreement over whether to leave for home tomorrow if we hadn’t yet found what we were seeking. It was becoming clearer to me that this trip could be a proverbial wild-goose chase, and that the longer we stayed, the more likely we were to provide fuel for the flash fires that could be waiting for us at home. At this point, we had no way of knowing whether our absence had been reported, whether anyone was looking for us, or whether that hoodlum, DeRon, had actually made good on his threat of false accusations.
Finally, we left the argument unsettled, and our subsequent good night felt more like a mutual good riddance. Armed with a book about historic towns in the Piney Woods, I proceeded to my room, slipped into my pajamas, brushed my teeth, and climbed into bed. The old house creaked and groaned, a spring breeze rattling the veranda doors as I thumbed through the book, searching for applicable bits of history or mention of a tragic house fire during the right time frame. So far, though, what I’d found regarding the thirties and early forties largely discussed the boom days of oil and timber, and the trade in alcohol during Prohibition, when rumrunners brought their wares through ports on the Gulf of Mexico. According to the text, they were flamboyant and dangerous men who made their fortunes transporting illegal liquor northward.
A little
tap-tap-tap
came at the door, and I folded the book on my lap. “Yes?”
The door creaked open a crack. “J. Norm, you decent?”
“Completely in the buff. Horrible to see,” I answered, and the door opened wider.
Outside in the hall stood Epiphany in a T-shirt with the neck torn out and a pair of baggy sweatpants, hugging a lacy floral-print pillow like a giant teddy bear. “Did you hear that?” she whispered, as if someone might be listening. Her shoulders shuddered, and she stepped into the room without waiting to be invited. “There’s someone walking in the hall. They stopped right outside my bedroom.”
“I’ve been up reading.” Which was the story of my life, really. I seldom slept a solid night anymore. “I didn’t hear anything.”
“It
woke
me up.” Her eyes widened further, which I would have thought impossible.
“There was no noise,” I assured her.
She shifted from one foot to the other, her slim fingers kneading the pillow. Finally, she huffed, and said, “Can I just stay in here with you?” She moved a few steps toward a fainting couch on the other side of the room.
“Epiphany, I hardly—”
“You’re not even gonna know I’m here, I promise.” Another few steps. Behind her, the door creaked shut on its own. She squeaked and scampered to the sofa, then jumped onto it like a child playing Sharks in the Water, and pulled an afghan over herself.
I leaned back in my bed and opened my book again. “I don’t see what help I’ll be if there are ghosts around. They’d hardly be afraid of a crippled old man with a bad heart.”
Satisfied that she wasn’t being sent back to her own room, Epiphany snuggled down, burrowing into the feather pillow. “You can tell them rocket stories until they get bored and leave.”
I smirked at her over the top of my book.
She yawned, gazing past me toward the veranda doors. “I’m just joking, you know. I like your stories.”
“I know,” I said.
She inhaled and exhaled, her lashes falling to half-mast as she gazed through the veranda doors to the backyard, where blooming magnolias gleamed in the moonlight. “Chris said those were slave cabins out back. They made some of the slaves live in the attic, too—the people who worked in the house. They beat people and chained them to the beds up there and stuff, too.”
I laid the book against my knees, looked at her, but her eyes were falling closed. “I suspect so. History is filled with terrible events that were rationalized by the masses.” I wondered if she really understood that the world in which I’d grown up was vastly different from hers. So much change in a single lifetime. From milk trucks rumbling through the streets to a man on the moon. From a time when her aunts and grandmothers would have taken work in houses like these, oiling the banisters, cooking meals, and providing nursery care for the children, to a time when her opportunities were as big as her ability to dream them and her gumption to make them come true.
“It’s weird . . . to think about,” she whispered, then yawned again, breathed out a long, slow breath, and let herself sink away.
“Yes, it is,” I answered quietly.
While browsing the book awhile longer, I watched her sleep. Quiet now, curled into a ball with fistfuls of blanket tucked under her chin, she looked angelic, innocent. I was reminded of Deborah, not much younger than this, curled in her sleeping bag on the floor of our master bedroom. While Annalee was gone to a long-running PTA meeting, Deborah had stumbled across
The Exorcist
on television, after Roy was in bed. I hadn’t stopped her from watching it. My mind was on some project I’d brought home with me. I’d been forced to leave the office early due to the sudden cancellation of the babysitter Annalee had arranged.
But the work was forgotten, and somehow I’d ended up on the sofa beside Deborah, watching the movie with horrible fascination, something that I later said (in my own defense, because Annalee was furious with me) should never have been on television where children might find it. When it was finally over, Deborah wouldn’t go to bed in her own room. For weeks she dragged her sleeping pallet into our room, until finally her bad memories of the movie faded.
It was the last time I was ever called upon to babysit. I was deemed a complete failure at the task.
But now I remembered that on nights when I worked late or left early, I stood above that pallet and gazed at my daughter, silent and peaceful in her sleep, her dark hair curling around her. She was an angel so perfect that it was hard to believe I could have had a part in creating her. Each time before I left, I knelt down and kissed her, and whispered in her ear,
Sweet dreams, Deborah.
Did Deborah remember those nights so long ago, so short, so sweet to me in their recollection?
Setting the book aside, I took a pad of Ward House stationery from the bedside table, opened to a fresh page, and began to write. If anything should happen to me in this odd quest to find my family, Deborah should know that inside the man who’d overlooked her in favor of his work and his projects was the father who’d stood over her while she slept and thought her as beautiful as an angel. I wrote:
Dear Deborah,
Words do not come easily for so many men. We are taught to be strong, to provide, to put away our emotions. A father can work his way through his days and never see that his years are going by. If I could go back in time, I would say some things to that young father as he holds, somewhat uncertainly, his daughter for the very first time. These are the things I would say:
When you hear the first whimper in the night, go to the nursery and leave your wife sleeping. Rock in a chair, walk the floor, sing a lullaby so that she will know a man can be gentle.
When Mother is away for the evening, come home from work, do the babysitting. Learn to cook a hotdog or a pot of spaghetti, so that your daughter will know a man can serve another’s needs.
When she performs in school plays or dances in recitals, arrive early, sit in the front seat, devote your full attention. Clap the loudest, so that she will know a man can have eyes only for her.
When she asks for a tree house, don’t just build it, but build it with her. Sit high among the branches and talk about clouds, and caterpillars, and leaves. Ask her about her dreams and wait for her answers, so that she will know a man can listen.
When you pass by her door as she dresses for a date, tell her she is beautiful. Take her on a date yourself. Open doors, buy flowers, look her in the eye, so that she will know a man can respect her.
When she moves away from home, send a card, write a note, call on the phone. If something reminds you of her, take a minute to tell her, so that she will know a man can think of her even when she is away.
Tell her you love her, so that she will know a man can say the words.
If you hurt her, apologize, so that she will know a man can admit that he’s wrong.
These seem like such small things, such a fraction of time in the course of two lives. But a thread does not require much space. It can be too fine for the eye to see, yet, it is the very thing that binds, that takes pieces and laces them into a whole.
Without it, there are tatters.
It is never too late for a man to learn to stitch, to begin mending.
These are the things I would tell that young father, if I could.
A daughter grows up quickly. There isn’t time to waste.